Please do not go to this school as they really dont care about you! I was dealing with an online enrollment guide to get me set up to go here, and she was giving attitude towards me asking questions. Of course, we are going to have questions before signing documents as this is a big step for people.

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1
out of 5

LessonLearned-
August 11, 2018

Degree:
Video Game Design

Graduation Year:
2016

Do not attend this school, full stop. The online courses are a complete joke. They talked about how difficult the online courses were to pass because of the accelerated nature of the program. Here's the issue, I went into that program already having received a Bachelors Degree from a traditional four year school, with a minor in my field, and I passed the admittance tests and got accepted into a Masters program within my field. I skipped a series of courses within my field and took a 2nd year, 600 level course to test the waters at the Masters level where I was at and I passed with an A. So the idea that I would run into problems because of the pace, complexity, or dedication required to succeed in their online courses was irrelevant, I had the educational background, work ethic to prove I could handle a self-maintained online program. And I did, much in spite of the glaring failings of the program itself. If you succeed at Full Sail's online offerings you will succeed against the grain because the programs are not designed to equip you, educate you, or properly challenge you, they're designed to take your money for as little effort as possible. It's worth noting a couple of things: 1. Full Sail does not offer classes a la carte, meaning you MUST sign up for large swathes of expenses at a time without the recourse of changing your mind part way through. This means if you get 2 classes into a 6 class block, realize you made a mistake and want to stop going, you're financially committed to all of those other classes. Does a company that has faith in it's own product offer programs in this manner? Your contractual obligations should not be the reason why you continue to give a company money, it should be because of the quality of the product or service. By design, Full Sail is after your money, not your quality education. 2. The "instructors" are not professors. They do not want you to call them professors, they want you to call them instructors. At first this appears like a nice, convenient, warm way of referring to one another that makes the "instructor" more approachable. However you will quickly realize the instructors are largely unqualified to be called professors, they rarely have more than the level of education you're trying to attain. It's expected that a person instructing a Bachelor's level class would at minimum have a Master's level of education to draw from. At Full Sail, however, you will find people who graduated from Full Sail's own bachelors and associates programs only to come back into the fold as instructors of the same programs they graduated from. What does this remind you of? That's right, a pyramid scheme. These people who wind up as "instructors" at their online offerings are not interested in investing in a new wave of students, they're working effectively part time to make ends meet because they couldn't find success elsewhere. It really does show through, too, because the instructors are disinterested in their programs, following the same, month to month, cookie cutter curriculum so they can get paid, and rarely take student complaints seriously. 3. The courses are designed poorly and rarely revised. In one of my offerings I ran into a question on the very first test that completely stumped me. I had read through all of the material, watched all of the videos, studied the concepts, and still this question completely stumped me. I anguished over it, tried to deduce what the answer could be from the test itself, and still I took a guess on it. Come to find out the "instructor" who made the test put that question on there out of order. I realized this because the VERY NEXT CHAPTER WE WERE ASSIGNED AFTER THE TEST HAD THIS QUESTION INTRODUCED AS CONTENT FOR THE FIRST TIME. I was frustrated and when I informed the instructor he brushed it off by saying, "Eh, if anyone complains about it at the end of the month and their grade is close I'll fudge the lines and give them the next grade up." Is that someone who cares about you, as a student? Is that someone who takes pride in the quality of their own work? They let content run roughshod through their students without caring if their prepared to deal with it and then only if they recognize it was an issue, complain, and are deemed close enough in grade to matter by the already apathetic instructor, then they'll get an adjusted grade later. No, this is not a quality course run by a quality instructor and the next month I saw students complaining about the same question from the same test on a Facebook student group forum. And you know what? We got push back because we were helping those students. The Facebook group moderator had to post a message that talking about specific questions wasn't allowed and that they got flak from the Full Sail administrative staff because of it. Yeah, the student wouldn't have even had to post that question if the instructor cared enough to revise their materials after being informed that they were a problem. 4. Poor group performances. Do not be surprised to see 60% or more of your fellow classmates fail from one class to the next, for reasons I've already described. Go ahead and ask your on-boarding personnel what the graduation rates are and they'll say they do not have that information. Thankfully the internet does, it's one of the first non-advertisement hits on a Google search: https://go.fullsail.edu/2017-graduation-rates Go ahead and take a look at these rates. Whether you're talking about on campus or online programs they are wildly fluctuating and dip as low as 18%, with regular 40-60% graduation rates. You have to ask yourself why that is. Why can a school bring in 100 people into a program that 80 people will leave by the end? Are they not vetting their students properly, setting them up for failure and continued financial obligation? Is it really just a matter of "get good" because the material is that "rigorous?" Take it from someone who has achieved two degrees and gone on to test out of Masters level programs, the failure rates at Full Sail are not because the program material is too dense or complex. It's because the instructors are not professors, the courses are not properly designed, the school is not interested in your success, and the financial model makes Full Sail a winner regardless of your individual outcome. 5. My personal experience. I wanted to provide good, verifiable reasons for why Full Sail is a garbage school and not worth your time. What I realized after having gone there is that taking courses online in a fast paced manner to reach my own success can already be done. Go check out Udemy, edX, or similar online course offerings that allow you to study at your own pace to acquire the knowledge you want. Want to be a programmer? Go check out https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/find-by-topic/ to find all of MIT's course material posted free and open source. From lectures and assignments to video lectures and examples. With the amount of free, properly designed, rigorous material already out in the wild on the internet you will find that your success at Full Sail can easily be replicated outside of Full Sail for either no cost or an absolute fraction of the cost. I began to realize all of this about 6 months into my courses. I had done the assignments, watched the lectures, made the videos, done everything I was supposed to do. Then I got into my first game design class where we had this sandbox style assignment where the "instructors" provided an easily accessible framework of variables to ascribe to Unity models in game. Wanted to make a wall that applied physics to an object on touch? Create the condition of "on touch" and "result is force in a given direction." You could get as creative as you wanted to with it. I read the ENTIRE rubric, watched all of the examples, did all of my homework and created my assignment to meet the highest scoring points possible. I put in the number of scene transitions, game objects, physics objects, etc. that I needed to pass the assignment with flying colors. I even read the portion of the assignment notes that stated the intent, the purpose of the assignment was not to make a fully shippable product, it wasn't meant to be a full on video game that was polished. They actually included in the intro to the assignment that it was meant to be a rough product with tools that the instructors gave us to meet the requested assignment outcomes. So I realize that my Unity objects are not easily editable in groups, if I create a Unity object that serves one purpose, has one set of pre-made variables on it, then duplicate it, and want to adjust the whole batch I have to go one by one to edit the whole batch. That seemed excessive and ridiculous. One of the tests of a proper design is how scalable it is and how easily modifiable it is as a finished product. You shouldn't have to build your scene from the ground up because you want x object to have a y variable associated with it. If you can't make changes throughout the build without encountering a massive rework problem, then you should have seen that coming from the start and given yourself the leeway needed. So I did, I assigned tons of open variables to my objects so I could modify them on the fly without having to tear it all down and start over. I built the thing, I exported the Unity project as a fully realized video game (albeit it was only two scenes), and I tested it on fresh Unity builds to see if it would work when importing it. In other words, whether importing the Unity scenes into the engine itself or playing it as an executable, the thing worked. I submitted my assignment and went to bed feeling wildly accomplished with myself. It was my first real design project and I blew it out of the water. Then I got an email reply from my "instructor" who made some BS claim that the project wouldn't open. I had to resubmit it for a late grade of 10% off. I lost my mind when he said that because I knew exactly what he was talking about. Their tools they gave us, the "Generic Behaviors," caused a problem when trying to load the Unity scenes in a fresh build. You had to first import settings to interact with the Unity scenes and allow it to run. All of this information I provided when I submitted my assignment, I told them how to make my scenes run and that their Generic Behaviors caused this problem. It was literally as simple as going into your Unity menu, scrolling down, and making the adjustment. It was something like 2 or 3 clicks away and the thing loaded properly. It's worth noting that the tools they gave me to make the assignment with caused this problem and if you loaded the exported, executable version of that file that had these settings in the final build it worked. So I did make a program that worked, the assignment made no mention of this issue having relevance to the final grade, and I know this because I read through all of the assignment requirements before making it. It didn't say anything about working without having to adjust the native Unity settings, instead it made a point of stating the importance of accepting an imperfect project because it wasn't intended to be a Gold version of a video game ready to ship tomorrow. So whether by the spirit of the assignment or by the written rules of the assignment I made a program that worked and they screwed me on it. I know what happened, the sleep-deprived, caffeine junky of an instructor who opened my assignment didn't get it to work immediately, didn't bother looking at my notes or making a good-faith effort to examine the game as is, and then because it was too hard to do his job as an actual educator just sent me a reply that punished me for something that was out of my control. Do you want to know how ridiculous this whole issue was? I recorded myself opening the game after making the appropriate setting adjustment, played it, and showed on my recording that the game worked. I had video evidence that they were wrong, that it did work, that I did my assignment correctly. I talked to my Full Sail student liaison about it and he was blown away. He was sad, I could hear it in his voice, because the same BS I was running into is the same BS every student runs into. Unclear assignments, poorly constructed course materials, disinterested, under qualified "instructors," and the ultimate goal of stroking one another's egos in an insular educational environment where they only care if they get your money. My liaison was just as confused, frustrated, and annoyed as I was. The head of the program who made the course defaulted to supporting his instructor, because of course he would, and told me to brush it under the rug and move on. They actually praised my assignment because it was a fun, well designed ball game with enjoyable controls and a nice couple of levels to interact with. That's right, they told me I had a fun design that met all of the rubric standards they set out for my first ever game design assignment but because the jackass who was in charge of opening and reviewing my assignment didn't bother to learn how to open it properly I got screwed. Even after showing them with a video that it could be opened by adjusting a setting on the native Unity engine and reiterating that this requirement was NOT a part of the original assignment (i.e. it did not say on the rubric it must work under these sorts of conditions) I still got down graded. They patted me on the back and told me to move onto the next assignment, to pay more attention and do better next time. That was the most insulting thing they could have said, because I did read the materials they offered, I did make it according to their exact requirements. They had no caveat about leaving dead, unused Generic Behavior variables on objects. They made no mention of what Unity settings it had to run under. They just threw me under the bus instead of admitting they had a poorly designed and instructed course. I was so burned by it that I left the school, I didn't even finish the rest of my already paid for courses. I cut ties with them. And you know what? My student liaison also cut ties with them. He told me on our recorded phone call it had nothing to do with how disappointed he was regarding my horrible experience being abused by the instructors. But you know what? I could hear it in his voice when we spoke on the phone, he was wildly disappointed when he was trying to get my penalized grade overturned and he sounded like a much happier individual when he told me he was leaving the company. That's what it is, after all, it's a company after your money. So perhaps my story wasn't the exclusive reason he left, perhaps it's the culture of under qualified, disinterested, poorly designed, poorly instructed, and financially motivated snake-oil salesmen that breeds my kind of stories and interactions that told him to leave. Yes, you can be successful AT Full Sail, but you will only be handicapping yourself by attending. Any amount of success you would have had with Full Sail you would have realized more fully without Full Sail. Do NOT attend this school.

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1
out of 5

Smith-
August 5, 2018

Degree:
Video Game Design

Graduation Year:
2016

This school is a joke. I took online classes, which Ive always done great with, but I left each month without understanding a single thing regardless of how good of a grade I got. The staff are ridiculous and the price of this place is through the roof. I was told the school is accredited many times by the customer service reps, enrollment persons, and my advisor. I specifically asked if it was accredited the way a normal university was (nationally) and I was assured they were. My fault on trusting them. Theyre not even accredited to the point that I can transfer credits from this waste of time. This school is an expensive joke. Thankfully I got out after only getting $7k in loans. The best part is that, because I could get loans they took away my at need scholarship, which gives money to people that cant pay out of pocket. I couldnt pay out of pocket so I got a small loan and they ripped the scholarship away because I had the ability to pay out of pocket. Dont waste your time here or even looking here. Go get an associates degree at a community college. Youll get better help and a better degree than here. My only hope is that this institution gets shut down and has to pay back large sums of money for their lies and hidden truths.

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5
out of 5

Jason Bueno-
August 3, 2018

Degree:
Graphic Design

Graduation Year:
2018

I greatly enjoyed my time at Full Sail and feel like I really got the education I paid for. I did the online Graphic Design BS program. I see a lot of negative reviews for Full Sail on this site. But, from my perspective, it was a great ride and well worth the money. I will say you have to be self-motivated and serious about your education if you are attempting any online program. Every month is a different class and the classes are taught by people who are or were in the Graphic Design field. That greatly helps because you know they know their stuff. I graduated Valedictorian and won Advanced Achievement as well as 5 Course Director Awards. I put in the hard work and Full Sail gave me every opportunity to (for a lack of a better term) sail. I ended up getting a job as Marketing Coordinator & Graphic Designer because of my education at Full Sail. If you are self-motivated I would recommend the Full Sail online programs 100%!

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1
out of 5

Kyler Johnson-
July 27, 2018

Degree:
Web Development

Graduation Year:
2016

I count my enrollment with Full Sail University in their online program to be the biggest mistake of my life. I incurred a lot of debt while taking core classes that didn't transfer from my previous Bachelors degree from another college with the hopes that the development specific classes later on would teach me what I needed to know to become a web/software developer. I finally get to the classes teaching c# along with html, css, and javascript and all of the lecture videos in the courses were links to Lynda.com videos that I could access for $29.99/month. I dropped out of Full Sail University's 3 year program and got my own membership to TeamTreeHouse.com and pluralsight.com and landed my first job as a software developer 3 months later. Unfortunately, I incurred $20,000 in debt while attending this scam of a university program. Do yourself a favor and don't even consider attending this college for anything web or software related. You're better off self-taught or paying $7,000 for a coding bootcamp.

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3
out of 5

Brett Cherokee-
June 12, 2018

Degree:
Music Production

Graduation Year:
2019

I am still currently enrolled and actively finishing my degree and feel like I should give an honest review. First, the accessibility of online classes. Their online course platform known as FSO is honestly pretty intuitive. Some of the best Web development I've seen in a long time. It's fast, simple, easy to use for anyone and everything is laid out perfectly. 5 stars on that. But that's sadly where the 5 stars end... Now for the Instructors and course curriculum. For online courses, you as a student often find yourself feeling like an after thought. This isn't to speak for all instructors because I've had a few that are really involved and would often respond and have in depth conversations about my troubles and how to fix them. To these instructors, I applaud you. The majority of instructors I've had though have been distance, take weeks to give feedback on assignments, sometimes after the class has already finished and sometimes just grade you with no feedback. These same instructors will often also have entire courses made up of Lynda classes and often times you just end up teaching yourself. Like I said, this does not reflect ALL instructors at Full Sail University. But the lack of custom course material provided by a majority of instructors personally is... disheartening. Another thing id like to comment on is the amount of online accounts you have to create. These are accounts youll create and use for one class and then theyll never be used again. I assume this is because these are partners of Full Sail and in return, a lot of courses are based off all these sites for traffic and exposure. Its honestly... pretty shady to me... It doesnt necessarily detract from the material... but its alittle much. Now on to time constraints... I will say if you have a full time job and work 40+ hours a week... balancing work, this school, and your life will be difficult. Possible but difficult so don't give up. So honestly overall... if you have other options in the form of attending a 4 year college in person, do that. Don't enroll in Full Sail online, or at least attend Full Sail on campus. Now this could just be my unfortunate experience and maybe I've just gotten unlucky but either way, this is what I've been through attending Full Sail Online. Also know that I will be finishing my degree as I've put almost 2 years into this and don't give up easily. So wish me luck.

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1
out of 5

J. Martin-
June 5, 2018

Degree:
Video Game Design

Graduation Year:
2020

I went into this degree attempting to gain more knowledge on game design. I currently work as a systems engineer and do program modding on the side. I had a GI Bill to use and always saw advertisements for the school. I loved the way the program was laid out with core classes like history focused on gaming. History class is all on mythology and how mythology plays important roles in gaming. I have not got to that class yet and likely will not because it is not worth spending rest of my GI Bill. I work 50+ hour weeks and spoke with the student liaisons about needing full access to classes to be able to manage and plan my time. I was assured multiple times that after the "core four" ,core classes including math, english, etc, that all classes would open. Ok great sign me up! Get through the core four classes and no classes have been open. I ask professors to open them up for me, some have tried to, failed and got confused on why it didn't work. Some stated it would stress out other students to much to open it up and refuse. I speak to my new liaison and get told no class would be open normally. Glad I asked about it before enrolling!!!! So basically the lied to ensure I enrolled even though they knew they would not meet my expectation. So the class material and how its going. Very little challenge to the classes at all. Professor interaction may include a 1 hour live group chat a week, maybe not. Mostly the classes a bunch of PDFs, youtube links, and some vocabulary assignments, I had one class with a vocabulary quiz each week, are we in middle school? Really depending on the teach assignments will take 1-2 weeks to get graded. Some professor provided great feedback during the "core four". Since then I get good job, 90. So why did I get a 90 professor I would like to improve whatever I did wrong. No response. So currently I am enrolled in a degree that will basically be a piece of paper I can put on the wall and say I completed that and not improve my overall knowledge in skill more then a 10 dollar Udemy course could. Actually when I get free time I have been doing some online courses from sites like that and learned much more. Also I go via online. All the nice stuff they do like design competitions or any extra stuff is normally marked Campus Student Only. Why could an online student not create something and submit just like the campus student??? During my military career I went to 5 different schools dabbling in different fields of study and by far this is the WORST.

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1
out of 5

Uhmm..no?-
May 30, 2018

Degree:
Graphic Design

Graduation Year:
2018

I had studied for one of the online bachelors degree that they offered. Let's just say one thing, every time I talked to the administration office or student liaison it was almost a new person every call if not every other call. I don't know if it's high turn over rate or what but normally institutions have a consistent group of people working with students and I find it odd how I found myself meeting a new person each time. This continued over 3 years. Now how this effects my academics is concerning. If I were to have personal issues with struggles in school I would likely have to re-explain myself each time I call. I do not like how I didn't have a designated go to person to talk to to feel secure about my academic progress at the school. The courses are highly accelerated and quite annoying to me because I don't properly soak all the material that is taught. You basically spend 1 week on curriculum that is meant to be spread out for 3 weeks. I also felt as if I never properly got to work on assignments the way I wanted to or to be creative and put my creativity to work because you cannot rush creativity. I always felt I was rushing to meet a deadline more than I was creating quality work and was never satisfied with majority of my outcomes and this is meant to be your portfolio to present to companies or people you'd like to work for, how can I submit that when I'm unsatisfied with it? If you're considering this school, I'd advise you to go elsewhere. Credits are nontransferable, the institution itself doesn't care about its students, you're merely pocket money they're accumulating. It costs the same as other institutions so it's better to just go elsewhere for your education and is much more worth your while than here. While I find everything about this school irritating, curriculum goes so fast that you barely have enough time to really fit in any questions you have to your professors. The one positive thing I have to say about this school is that most of the teachers are very passionate and very caring (but most professors at any school are about the same so it's nothing special here); however you're still paying to essentially teach yourself. Seriously. Find a different school. I really wish I did.

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3
out of 5

Celena-
May 8, 2018

Degree:
Video Game Design

Graduation Year:
2018

Seriously don't go here for game art. I can tell you now in a few sentsences what you need to know without going through the bulls*** I did. They will teach you how to model in Maya, sculpt in Zbrush, and texture in Substance Painter. And that's about it. They'll even say "Oh we don't teach anything about Photoshop" (one of the most basic softwares) and expect you to learn it on your own. What a waste of a degree.

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2
out of 5

EG-
May 4, 2018

Degree:
Internet Marketing

Graduation Year:
2018

I was in the program for Internet Marketing and a quarter of the way my father became very ill. I had to make a choice and so I called the school to talk to my advisor and told him my situation, that my father was very ill and my mother needed help caring for him. The advisor couldn't really offer any advise, because as he said "I'm not here to guide you and can't tell you what's best for you", told me that I had a few days to think things over and then I'd have to make a decision, I knew that I wouldn't be able to continue so I dropped before I could get any further to avoid more debt. Still, to this day, I'm dealing some of the most heartless and helpless staff I've ever encountered. I've heard all the stories about how great G. is to students in need and how some of the instructors go out of their way to really help students with things like food and giving real advise, but their administrative side always reminds me that I'm just a credit score and payment to them. Where is the compassion? The true ADVISORS? Be warned the student advisors only exist to give you comfort in the beginning and coax you into thinking that they're there for your well being and education, but in reality only serve to get you in debt and stay in debt to the school. Nelnet and Naviant (formerly Sallie Mae) have a deal with this school, just follow the rabbit.

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